NEWTOWN, Conn. — With an increasing number of college students taking up target shooting at competitive and club levels, the National Shooting Sports Foundation is providing $109,500 in support to ensure that even more young men and women have the opportunity to give shooting a try. (more…)

While the Mayor knew back in September that the Wizards were moving to Kansas, (because Kansas was able to use Star bonds to secure the Wizards stadium) that didn’t preclude the Mayor from continuing to negotiate hard to retain the Cerner jobs that were promised for The Trails development project in the old Bannister Mall site.

So, how exactly did Senate leadership persuade the few remaining Democrats who were dragging their heels? By appealing to their principles, of course. FoxNews.comreports:

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., won between $100 million and $300 million in additional federal aid for her state’s Medicaid population. The deal, secured before she cast her critical vote in favor of bringing the health bill to the floor, was immediately dubbed the “Louisiana Purchase,” though the actual Louisiana Purchase was considerably cheaper.

… Florida, New York and Pennsylvania — where five of six senators are Democrats — will have their seniors’ Medicare Advantage benefits protected, even as the program sees massive cuts elsewhere.

… Nebraska’s [Sen. Ben Nelson] won permanent federal aid for his state’s expanded Medicaid population, a benefit worth up to $100 million over 10 years. Other states get the federal aid for three years, but Nebraska’s benefit is indefinite.

1. Public Revulsion. The bill was already under water in every major public-opinion poll, and opposed by a margin of almost 2 to 1 in the latest CNN poll. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll put its support at freezing, 32 percent. A few ticks downward and the bill will be in the 20s.

It stinks of politics. Why is there such a rush to pass this bill now? It’s because the President of the United States recognizes that it is hurting his numbers, and he wants it off the agenda. It might not be ready to be passed. In fact, it’s obviously not ready! Yet that doesn’t matter. The President wants this out of the way by his State of the Union Address. This is nakedly self-interested political calculation by the President – nothing more and nothing less.

A Democratic Congress rejected Hillary Clinton’s health care plan in 1994, and a unanimous Senate rejected the central provision of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. But this time, with a steep recession and a new leader, things would be different.

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that “reform” has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.